


The Seasons Forgiving

by aegistheia



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Mostly Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegistheia/pseuds/aegistheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything happens in between one breath and the next.  Three perspectives, from the beginning to the end.</p><blockquote>
  <p>On the fourth day of the new year, Sumeragi Hokuto finds an injured sparrow in the snow.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	The Seasons Forgiving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verdenal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
>  **Also Archived On:** [Livejournal](http://aegiscrypt.livejournal.com/9285.html); [Dreamwidth](http://aegiscrypt.dreamwidth.org/9215.html).

On the fourth day of the new year, Sumeragi Hokuto finds an injured sparrow in the snow.

Subaru hurries over when he catches sight of his sister crouched in the snowbank. “Oh, no!” he frets, sinking to his knees beside her without a care for his exquisitely tailored trousers. “Seishirou-san, can it be saved?”

The bird is too cold to shiver, and the compound fracture in its wing will keep it land bound for much of the winter. Even if its heart is still beating, it is only barely strong enough. With Subaru here, he will need the sakura tree to succeed. Seishirou effects his most apologetic smile. “I don’t know, Subaru-kun, but I don’t believe that it’s worth it.”

Subaru looks up at that, aghast. “All life is worth saving!”

“Oh, dear,” he sighs, “this is not how I had hoped our first walk of the year in Ueno Park might go.”

“I don’t think the sparrow had hoped this was how today might go, either,” Hokuto murmurs. “Come, tell us, Sei-chan. Why don’t you think it’s worth it to save this poor bird?”

“I believe,” he says, looking down at the feeble creature, “that when an animal is too injured to be saved, we ought to grant it the grace of a merciful death. A grace we ought to extend to all living things.”

“About that, Seishirou-san,” Subaru says hesitantly, “why do people ask vets like you to take care of their pets’ health and also their euthanasia? Wouldn’t they doubt your integrity if you also end their lives?”

“They entrust me with their pets’ wellbeing,” Seishirou corrects. “Not all life is worth living. Would you rather that I prolong their suffering for the benefit of my own conscience?”

“And what of people?” Hokuto says, quiet as the muffling snow, “why do you think our society is so against euthanasia for patients who are suffering?”

“Well. I suppose some people like to think that humans are morally superior to their animal brethren, and thus believe that they should live in exchange for their greater potential. And, of course, many people value their own peace of mind more than the suffering of others.”

She hands the bird to Subaru, whom cups his gloved hands over it in his lap in an obviously futile gesture to keep it warm. “Say a person’s potential is balanced between contributing to society and damaging people’s lives. How can we decide who to help live and who to help die, then?”

Seishirou arches an eyebrow, watching her dust her knees as she stands. “Consider, then, the principle of greater good. Should we expend many resources on a case and its fallout, or allot those very same resources to many cases that each require less? It is not a question with the same answer for every circumstance, as you may have intuited.”

Hokuto gives him a crooked smile. “So you’re saying that you can help end a life given the right motivation. How rare of you to give me an actual answer at all, Sei-chan.”

“If we have the power to give life, so should we also have the responsibility to give death. There should be a balance.” He looks down at Subaru’s bowed head. “What do you think, Subaru-kun? You have work within the hour at the Imperial palace, don’t you? We’d best decide quickly how to treat the sparrow.”

“I still believe it should be saved, but Seishirou-san is the veterinarian. If it is best that it dies,” Subaru says, “then I won’t look away.”

Hokuto lays a hand on his shoulder, and says nothing more.

“My intended is so brave,” Seishirou murmurs, but for once Subaru doesn’t blush. The Sumeragi had lucked out, breeding a child of this quality to become their Thirteenth. Perhaps, he, too, may have lucked out on his whim, if Subaru proves his instincts right.

Subaru readily gives him the bird. This close, he will have to be careful; it is still too soon to throw the bet. As if in response, the wind picks up, eddying about them in a gust of powder snow and petals. When the unquenchable light of Subaru’s gaze dart towards the back of the park, where unseasonal pink flowers bloom as brightly as his unseasonal green eyes, the power of the sakura touches his core, and sinks through him.

Seishirou breathes in, twists his hands, and watches through his _shikigami_ ’s eyes in a Nagasaki yakuza club’s private room as the Minister of Finance chokes on his own heartsblood.

 

\-----

 

“It’s refreshing,” Seishirou-san says, “to know that a master of your level still has hobbies like the rest of us regular folks.”

“Seishirou-san!” Subaru protests. He can feel himself reddening. “I’m just as normal as everybody else!”

Seishirou-san plows on with merry disregard. “If I’d known you had such an interest in general sciences, I would have sooner acted upon it.”

Hokuto looks up from the model of the solar system. “My brother is a very complex teenager, Sei-chan!”

“Oh, yes. I’d have thought that an onmyouji of Subaru-kun’s calibre would have dedicated his all into what he already has to do. And yet here he is, indulging me on a date to the planetarium!”

“I’ve always loved the night sky,” Subaru admits, wistful. True, he’d seen more than his share of the midnight scenery, but most of his clients are located in the hearts of metropolitan areas. It’s not the same, offset by fluorescence and insomnia. “And I keep missing my classes, especially science, so...”

“Oh? Science, hm? How does this fit into your role as an onmyouji?”

“Onmyoudou can clarify many aspects of life, but so can modern science. They can coexist and explain even more of the world between them, don’t you think? It’s not like it’ll go away even if we ignore it.”

“It won’t go away, no,” Seishirou-san muses, “but when the days turn, for example, the stars disappear.”

“But that’s not quite right. Even if the moon glows and the sun shines brighter, the stars are still there.”

“True. Perhaps it would be better to call this world one ruled by constellations?”

“I read today’s horoscopes!” Hokuto, ever the flouter of that traditional ban, crows from where she is now observing a larger model of Saturn’s orbit.

“N-no! Not constellations. Just... stars. They might not make as much a difference to us than the sun and the moon, but... even if you can’t see them, they’re still there. Shining.” He flushes under Seishirou-san’s heavy regard. “I know that beauty must fade,” he says hastily, “but there’s something beautiful in that persistence, isn’t there?”

“My,” Seishirou-san says, after a beat, “I didn’t know you had such a talent for poetry too, Subaru-kun. Such surprises you are revealing to me today!”

“Taking advantage of every opportunity to woo Subaru, now, are we?” Hokuto leers.

“Nonsense,” Seishirou-san demurs peaceably, “I can scarce afford to offend my future sister-in-law by giving anything less than the best of what my beloved deserves.”

“Ohoho, so bold, Sei-chan! You can’t just tease, you know. If you’re going to be a creepy pervert and monopolize all the free time Subaru doesn’t have, then I expect the greatest of romances for my brother! It’s his due, you’ll agree!”

“Hokuto-chan,” Seishirou-san reproves, “the way you go about cheering every move I make towards my intended, it’s as if you’d invite yourself into our bedroom when that time comes too. With a video camera, I might suspect.”

“Oh, no,” she cries as Subaru fights to prevent his blush from burning his cheeks off, “how could you accuse me of such callous behaviour!” She pauses just long enough for him to brace himself. “My dear brother has to invite me in first, after all!”

“Oh?” Seishirou-san says, with gracious amusement, “you’ll not wait for my invitation?”

“You weren’t protesting when you alleged my actions, now, were you?”

“True.” Seishirou-san looks entirely too thoughtful for Subaru’s comfort.

“And Sei-chan knows the best angles to look pretty!”

“Hokuto-chan!” Subaru protests again, helplessly.

Seishirou-san and Hokuto laugh then, in tandem, and push him along to the next exhibit. Seishirou-san’s hand is a reassuring weight on his shoulder, Hokuto’s voice a great rolling weight of all that is to comment upon just out of sight. It’s a privileged life he leads, Subaru knows, his lifestyle a rarefied distillation of upper class and power that precludes him from many of civilian life’s simpler joys. But Seishirou-san is right, isn’t he? That normal is relative? That happiness is their own to call?

All things must pass, and all things must change. Still, Subaru holds his breath, and lets himself hope that moments like these will never end.

 

\-----

 

Finally she thinks, _at least Subaru’s heart is still beating._

Hokuto wipes her tears, stands up, and gives serious thought to giving Sei-chan an honest critique of his performance. Sakurazuka Seishirou has not been nearly as sneaky as he would probably have liked, and as any true art critic, Hokuto feels the duty to allow the performer to improve through thoughtful feedback.

Naturally, having been brought up in gracious and tactful company, Hokuto hadn’t offered unsolicited commentary. But _honestly_. All those little tells beyond his eyes, all those silences where there should have been sound; did he think they were so blind? Did he think he was playing a game with infinite second chances? Did he consider them – her – so little a threat?

But Hokuto already knows the answers to that. She was, after all, weaned on the politics of the land of the rising sun. She can already picture how the conversation would go: he would tell her that she isn’t asking the right questions, she would tell him that he’s not fit to judge that for himself and also that he owes her answers for more lifetimes than she’s prepared to live, and then where would they be? Where would they go? Why would they even be talking about this in the first place?

Right. Because they wouldn’t be talking about this in the first place. She has the benefit of a step back from Subaru’s brilliant soul, and Sei-chan his years; they both know the name of the abyss between them.

Because in the end, of course, it was not where the bone had been broken that had decided the sparrow’s fate, that innocent day early in the year. It had been Sei-chan’s hands descending, intent writ upon their motions; it had been the crush of the bird’s spine as the first cervical vertebra misaligns from the foramen magnum, as the spinal cord disconnects from the brainstem, as the carotid artery and jugular veins tear through.

What? Sumeragi Hokuto has studied her share of medicine, too.

And because she has also studied psychology and sociology, she also knows that in the end, it had been her standing aside, and Subaru watching on, as Sakurazuka Seishirou knelt beside the sparrow and laid out his mercy in the snow for them to swallow as anaesthesia.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand. It’s that she does. Duty requires you to do what you have to do, no matter how much you don’t like it, or don’t want to. It is their creed, as the peerless, as the solitary. It’s not a choice for people like them.

That’s the thing, though. Onmyoudou is an equilibrium. Whatever their honoured grandmother may preach about the dangers of not knowing darkness, Sumeragi and Sakurazukamori are equally matched, and equally necessary, for a reason that is fundamental to their craft. But they are more than just concepts, her brother and Sei-chan, and there is more at work in the world than pure theory. It’s about time she reminds them that they must all, sooner or later, dance to music beyond their own scopes. They don’t seem to have any idea how to balance their choices against their duties, and aren’t they lucky that Hokuto has just the remedy! Planned in the days between Subaru’s descent and her rise!

Aren’t they lucky that they are alive, and therefore still have a choice to make.

She won’t fail her clan head, or her brother. She has Sumeragi blood flowing in her veins, too. Without the light, there is no darkness, and where the light shines, no shadow can touch. And, oh, no, today is not the day for anaesthesia. The Sakurazukamori – Sei-chan – won’t have Subaru like this. He won’t. Not ever like this, ever again.

Hokuto breathes out, kisses Subaru one last time, and walks into the empire of stars.

 

 

 

_-fin-_  



End file.
